When


Wed 01/06/2016    

13:30 - 14:30

Event Type

The recent detection of a gravitational wave from a binary black hole merger by the aLIGO detectors heralds the age of gravitational wave astronomy. Compact binaries composed of black holes and/ or neutron stars are the most promising source for the network of advanced gravitational wave detectors. The influence of finite-size effects (e.g., spin or tidal deformation) on the binary evolution can be large. This talk gives an overview of recent progress in the analytic description of finite-size effects by the use of effective field theory methods. The effective action of the compact objects takes the form of a point-particle action augmented by dynamical degrees of freedom related to its multipole moments. This enabled the computation of spin effects to a very high order using methods from quantum field theory, i.e., Feynman integral calculus. While spin effects are very important for the dynamics of black holes, tidal deformation effects are crucial for neutron stars and can provide hints on the nuclear equation of state. We model tidal effects in terms of an effective harmonic oscillator action for a dynamical quadrupole. This model can describe resonances of oscillation modes of the neutron star with the orbital motion.